Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Reading and Activity #5


In today’s society I am very concerned with my personal privacy.  Privacy is having your own personal things that no one else is allowed to view.  I feel like there are more and more ways to track people’s private things today than there was in past years.  For example, if you set your Facebook to “private” there are still ways that people and companies can find your information and look through your profile.  It is important for people today to realize that anything put on the internet whether you think it’s private or not can be seen by millions of people.  I feel like today our privacy has decreased tremendously and although some of this is our fault for posting things online and not being careful it is also a majority of the technology that is accessible today. The article on Facebook and privacy really opened my eyes to things I didn’t know about my privacy on Facebook.  I was shocked to find out that even if I’m not logged into Facebook and go to a page that has a Facebook “like” button it acknowledges that I was at that site.  The article also goes into discuss how it may not only be who is seeing our information but what we actually put up for those people to see.  I definitely agree that people today are posting way too personal things on social networks without thinking of who can see this.  You may think that you have set all your settings to private but it’s important to understand that other people can access your information.  I didn’t like that the article said that in the future Facebook is going to allow users access to your searches and page views, time and date, and even IP addresses while you’re logged into Facebook.  This makes me question whether or not I should even have a Facebook and if the benefit of having one outweighs the privacy issue that is continuing to grow. 

Monday, November 5, 2012

News Report #4


“U.S. judge tosses Apple vs. Google lawsuit over patents”

Dan Levine and Alexei Oreskovic

11/5/12


 

 

 

            With the ever growing popularity of smartphones, patent wars have been on the rise.  This article talks about how Apple had a lawsuit against Google, as well as Motorola, stating that Motorola’s licensing practices were unfair.  Apple believes that Google and partners that use the operating system known as Android for their mobile services are a copy of their iOS smartphone software.  There have been many ongoing battles between cell phone servers about whose software is copying whose; however, Apple was unsuccessful in the courts and the case was thrown out the morning of the trial.  Of course Google had no problem with the trial being dropped and have stated that they are “interested in reaching an agreement with Apple”. 

            I believe that as technology continues to grow so will these “wars”.  If everyone is using the latest technologies out there then there is bound to be some overlap in these software systems. Although being the first to have the newest and best operating system is of high importance to these companies I don’t think it is something that our courts need to be held up with.  Like I said there is only so much these companies can do before they all start looking the same.  However, I don’t understand how the judge felt as though she was not legally allowed to hear Apple’s claim.  I honestly think that there are much more important things to be worried about than what company is using the same software as another. Soon there will be another software that we are all going to be using and even more “wars” about who is copying who.